Human rights group donating records to Duke library

A California-based human rights group is donating historical records to a Duke University library.

The Center for Justice & Accountability, a human rights group involved lawsuits against alleged leaders of genocide in Guatemala and other countries, is donating records to the Human Rights Archive at Duke’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

The library will catalog the collection and make it available to researchers, students and the general public.

Other collections in that particular archive include the records of such noted human rights organizations as the Washington Office on Latin America, the International Center for Transitional Justice, Americans for Immigrant Justice and the Women’s Refugee Commission.

Patrick A. Stawski, human rights archivist at the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, said in an email that the gift agreement has just been signed, and they’re now in the planning stages of transferring the archives.

“As you can imagine, the records of international human rights activism are very complex and can contain sensitive information, so we must be very thoughtful and careful about what records can be transferred, and under what circumstances they can be accessed by the general public,” Stawski said.